Free Guernica by Dave Boling Page A

brother on the varied
     platforms of the Socialists and Republicans and Fascists and Anarchists.
    Miguel listened as he ate, while Dodo used his fork mostly for gesturing, especially when repeating reports of conflicts that
     were growing more lethal around Spain.
    “There was no news of it in the papers, but I heard of this from a crew from the south,” Dodo said between bites. “The Guardia
     fired into a crowd of demonstrating landworkers in Extremadura. They killed a man and wounded two women, and the rest of the
     crowd surrounded them and killed the guards with stones and knives. Can you imagine?”
    No, Miguel hadn’t heard of it, and he wondered if such a thing could be true. Dodo might say anything to emphasize his point.
    “It happened again at a protest, a peaceful protest, in Arnedo,” Dodo said. “Guards killed four women and a baby, and wounded
     thirty people who were just standing there watching.”
    “Why wouldn’t we hear something about it?” Miguel asked.
    “Because they don’t want you to hear, that’s why. People are afraid to talk. Afraid it will happen to them. Which is exactly
     why we have to be ready.”
    The waitress, standing behind Dodo, listened to his stories. She shook her head slowly and said to Miguel, “Don’t listen to
     him, dear, he won’t be so angry when he finds a girl.”
    Had there been reason for the citizens of Guernica to hold a referendum on the most popular person in the village, Miren Ansotegui
     would have won without competition. She was only sixteen, but she seemed to encourage people to take part in her youth rather
     than give them reason to be jealous of it. She reminded them how life looked before it became so complicated.
    It was more than the way she floated through the streets of town, so lean and loose limbed, her black braid a pendulum swinging
     from one hip to the other with each stride. More appealing was her knack for disarming people, for drawing them near, as if
     initiating them into her own club of the unrelentingly well intended.
    There was no trick to it beyond good nature. As she spread warm greetings to everyone she passed, she uncannily inquired about
     that single portion of their lives that made them most proud. She always opened a gate to somewhere they each wished to go.
     And then she listened.
    “Do you have any more of those incredible peppers, Mr. Al-dape?” she would ask the old man with a vegetable cart. “I couldn’t
     stop eating them the last time we had them. They were the best peppers I’ve ever had.”
    Or she would buzz into the Aranas’ dress shop with “Mrs. Arana, I saw your granddaughter the other day at the market and she
     must be the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen; is she walking yet?” It allowed them to brag about themselves without the
     stain of immodesty. She had asked the question, for heaven’s sake, and it would be rude to contradict her or decline to elaborate.
     As Miren hurried on to further encounters in town, her path of courteous inquiries left a wake of goodwill. Charmed acquaintances
     felt better than they did before she appeared and were eager for her quick return. There was much more about them, after all,
     that she would want to hear.
    She might mention the particulars of an event in support of whatever was her charitable cause at the moment. If Miren Ansotegui
     was going to be there, it would be entertaining, and it was guaranteed that many others would be likewise ensnared by her
     plans. Their involvement would allow them to recount their mu-nificence the following day in the cafés and tabernas , and also, they presumed, would place them on the unofficial list of Contributors to Miren’s Causes.
    When Aitor Arriola’s house burned to the stone after an ember from the hearth blew into the kindling pile, neighbors were
     helpful in getting his family back on its feet. But because of the burns Aitor suffered while trying to fight the blaze, his
     attempts at reconstruction